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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138802">The Worst Kind Of Love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syaunei/pseuds/Syaunei'>Syaunei</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Deep Space Nine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A Stitch in Time - Andrew Robinson, Epistolary, Everything Hurts, Gen, Heartbreak, Post-Canon, Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:48:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>502</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138802</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syaunei/pseuds/Syaunei</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst kind of love, Doctor, isn't the unrequited one or even the forbidden one. </p><p>The worst kind of love... is the one that has nowhere to go.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Julian Bashir &amp; Elim Garak, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak, Julian Bashir/Ezri Dax, implied</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

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<a name="section0001"><h2>The Worst Kind Of Love</h2></a>
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<p>My dear Doctor,</p>

<p>I trust you are well. I thank you for your considerate updates, as infrequent as they are, for they do me good. They are a reminder that elsewhere, life is more than duty and dust.</p>

<p>I suppose congratulations are in order.</p>

<p>There is an ancient Hebitian verse that expresses joy at such joining, but I profess that the tome containing it burned down with the rest of Enabran Tain's library and I do not fully remember the passage anymore. Perhaps I shall ask Astraea, time permitting.</p>

<p>I know that the literature of your homeworld is overly saturated with sentiments of the sort - no doubt you would recall, far better than I ever could, some appropriate sentence to explain what you are feeling right now. No doubt a sense of repleteness; an exultation – and you deserve it.</p>

<p>You of all, deserve it the most.</p>

<p>At Cardassian enjoinings, guests are expected to impart wisdom to the couple, so if you will permit me, let this be my gift to you.</p>

<p>No doubt you are expecting me to say that Love is Duty.</p>

<p>You would be only half-right.</p>

<p>Love <em>IS</em> Duty. A duty we undertake, willingly or unwillingly, but we bear its burden all the same. Of all the forms love takes, this aspect is rarely absent. Duty is the foundation upon which love is built, and one cannot have a fruitful relationship without it.</p>

<p>What people seem unwilling to mention, is the kinds of love that come uninvited – intrusive; ones whose duties and obligations we take upon ourselves without ever tasting the fruit of our gentle labor.</p>

<p>The worst kind of love, Doctor, isn't the unrequited one or even the forbidden one – I have tasted both, one is bittersweet and the other acrid and heady.</p>

<p>The worst kind of love... is the one that has nowhere to go.</p>

<p>Trapped within us, it lingers and rots; like flowers left unattended on a burial mound, going unremarked by the one they were intended for.</p>

<p>The ancient Hebitians claimed that we were not built to contain the love within us - it was always meant to overflow and water the fields, making flowers bloom and crops grow.</p>

<p>Certainly, such love can be sublimated into duty - creating a well-appointed garden that feeds the neighborhood; it can become a well-stitched woolen garment to keep someone warm in the harsh Cardassian winter, when winds howl around destroyed buildings, raising whirlwinds of ash and wailing through broken windows like trapped infants.</p>

<p>There are many ways such feelings can be harnessed, in employ of others, who will return that love with a belly that won't rumble, at least for a day, or limbs that won't shiver at the first gust of wind.</p>

<p>Yet, as with many things... Some sentiments are worthless; much like a letter lost in the post – never reaching its intended recipient.</p>

<p>The worst kind of love, Julian, isn't the lost kind, or the betrayed one.</p>

<p>The worst kind of love...</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Is the one left unexpressed.</p>

<p> </p>

<p> </p>

<p>
  <em>---Message Unsent---</em>
</p>
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